Surging YouTube drives Google in 2020
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 03 February 2021
There’s strong quarterly performance and there’s Google-class strong quarterly performance and in terms of 2020, this amounted to business worth $56.898 in the fourth quarter of 2002, with online video revenues from YouTube a key driver.
YouTube Select 20May2020
The Q4 performance represented a 23% annual increase in revenues. Operating income in Q4 almost doubled from $ 9.266 billion in Q4 2019 to $ 15.651 billion, while net income for the quarter soared by 42.69% on a yearly basis to $15.227 billion.

Looking at the business lines driving the growth in the quarter, revenue from YouTube ads in the quarter grew 45.96 on an annual basis to $6.885 billion. Google search contributed just over $31 billion in the quarter, up 17.36% compared with Q4 2019. Overall Google Services revenue for the quarter – which includes YouTube ads and fees received for subscription-based products such as YouTube Premium and YouTube TV – amounted to $52.873 billion. For the full year this was $ $168.635 billion, part of a company-wide annual total of $ 182.527 billion.

Commenting on the fourth quarter and annual results, Google and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said: “Our strong fourth quarter performance, with revenues of $56.9 billion, was driven by Search and YouTube, as consumer and business activity recovered from earlier in the year. Google Cloud revenues were $13.1 billion for 2020, with significant ongoing momentum, and we remain focused on delivering value across the growth opportunities we see.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, added: “Our strong results this quarter reflect the helpfulness of our products and services to people and businesses, as well as the accelerating transition to online services and the cloud. Google succeeds when we help our customers and partners succeed, and we see significant opportunities to forge meaningful partnerships as businesses increasingly look to a digital future.”